Rio Olympics

It’s no secret that the Olympic Games bring together a diverse pool of people from different ethnicities and cultures — individuals who have divergent beliefs and lifestyles, particularly when it comes to the practice of faith and religion. So, with the world’s most famous sports competition just days away, some might be wondering how Olympic organizers in Rio will help meet these diverse spiritual needs.

Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries have spent months working on preparations for the upcoming Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The Chassidic Jewish group is just about ready to greet the tens of thousands of Jews who are expected to be among the hundreds of thousands of people flocking to Brazil for the competition.

Representatives of five religions met on Wednesday (22 June) at the headquarters of the Rio 2016 Organising Committee to work on details about the inter-religious centre that will be opened at the Olympic Village. “It’s really good to see Rio de Janeiro as a welcoming place where religions understand each other,” said Cardinal Dom Orani Tempesta, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, who was alongside Rio 2016 president Carlos Nuzman.

In preparation for the Games, the Rio 2016 Olympic committee on June 15 released a video of the Rio medals being produced and provided a peek into what the medals will look like. Like the laurels of Olympic games past, gold medals will be 525 grams of silver plated with six grams of pure gold; silver medals will be 525 grams of silver; and bronze medals will be a similarly weighted mixture of copper, zinc, and tin.